


you've got to pick up every stitch

by getmean



Category: Papillon (2018)
Genre: Dream Magic, Familiars, Introspection, King Arthur Legend of the Sword AU, M/M, Mutual Attraction, Witchcraft, set kinda mid-movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:33:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23819962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getmean/pseuds/getmean
Summary: Can a king be made? Henri has always felt king of his own territory; king of the whores, king of the streets, king of all those secret things you do in the dark, with only the moonlight to catch the blade of a knife. But this — again, the mind veers. It feels unpleasantly like something he’s being forced to do by a hand so large and so powerful even he will end up bending under it.
Relationships: Henri "Papillon" Charriere/Louis Dega
Comments: 10
Kudos: 22





	you've got to pick up every stitch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bearkare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearkare/gifts).



> so this is a commission for @bearkare over on tumblr, and i literally couldn't have had more fun with a prompt than i did with this one!! this is an au that's been on my mind for ages, so thank you for commissioning me, and i hope it's everything you wanted! :~)
> 
> to readers: i don't think you'll have had to watch the movie to understand the fic, but it doesn't hurt! also, why haven't you seen the iconic king arthur legend of the sword!!!! go fix that, right now

Henri can’t quite pinpoint the exact moment that his saviours had become his kidnappers, but he thinks he can at least pinpoint the reason _why_ they had gone from untying his hands to re-tying them once they’d fished him from the river. The Sword, right? It’s all about the bloody Sword.

His jaw works around a mouthful of hardtack, eyes flitting from the faces of his kidnappers, to the Sword, to their faces once more. They’re not watching him, in that very careful way that a person doesn’t watch someone. Henri’s sure if he sprung up right now, they’d have him back to the ground quicker than he could blink. It’s there in the coiled readiness in their limbs, the oh-so-casual way their hands are resting on their swords. Even the mage feels quietly alert, his back to Henri but only just. He can almost see his profile. Huge eyes downcast, wet cloak steaming in the hot sunlight. Fiddling with something in his lap that his shoulder is concealing from Henri’s view.

Then, a wicked little idea. Wouldn’t it be funny to test their attention — ?

Henri shifts, boot scraping against the loose shale underfoot, and grins when he sees their heads snap up. “Any chance of a towel?” he asks, when they look at him. The mage’s head turns to stare at Henri from over his shoulder, strange pale eyes behind the circles of glass perched on his nose. Henri addresses just him, leaning forward over his knees as he adds, “I’m soaking wet, boys.”

To Henri’s surprise, the mage speaks before the men. “You look plenty dry to me,” he mutters, voice low. And then he turns back to whatever out-of-sight task he was up to, and Henri is left staring at the back of his head once more. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the men relax. 

Blame the exhaustion, blame the various aches and pains gripping every part of him, but for possibly the first time ever, Henri finds himself without a comeback. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, and one that turns him back to the hardtack in his hands for lack of anything better to do. The mage doesn’t turn back around. 

Henri looks down at his hands. The rope they’d tied his wrists together with has rubbed the thin skin red; a few more hours and it’ll be raw. He huffs. The mage’s head turns, just so very slightly, just so Henri can see the soft slope of his nose and the full arc of his mouth. 

_Look at me_ , Henri thinks. And the mage turns away. 

The past few days have had a strange quality to them, like the world has been spun incredibly fast. Now Henri feels disorientated, and disconnected from his old life in such a tangible way that he aches from it. Maybe it’s the grief he hasn’t had time to feel yet. Maybe it’s the after-effects of the Sword, burned into his eyelids so he sees it every time he blinks. Twisting in his guts like some sickly want — or is it fear? It’s hard to separate the two and Henri doesn’t think he’s ready to try, because each time he tries to think on the events of the last handful of days his mind veers away from it like a beaten dog. His body aches towards the Sword just as much as it shies away. 

Can a king be made? Henri has always felt king of his own territory; king of the whores, king of the streets, king of all those secret things you do in the dark, with only the moonlight to catch the blade of a knife. But this — again, the mind veers. It feels unpleasantly like something he’s being forced to do by a hand so large and so powerful even he will end up bending under it. It’s not a comfortable thing for him, to bend. Even being bound by those men and ignored by the mage stings. It occurs to Henri that he doesn’t know what to do, when the reins are yanked from him. 

Henri only realises he’s staring at the back of the mage’s head when the man moves, and pulls Henri’s attention to him. And Henri looks at him again, really looks at him. The way his eyeglasses catch the watery sunlight, the dark curl of his hair. Henri watches him pluck a pinch of something from a pouch at his foot, and then he leans forward and his face is obscured again. Curiosity is a hot little spark in the back of Henri’s mind. The mage is probably useful, would probably be a good man to have on his side. 

A bat is latched to his shoulder. Henri only sees it when it moves; its strange fingertip-wings almost spidery as it climbs closer to his throat. And Henri’s curiosity piques when he sees it, because why would a bat be awake in the light — and then it settles and grows as he realises. _Familiar_. The creature suits him.

“You speak to that thing?” Henri asks, pitching his voice just loud enough to carry across the space between them. The mage barely glances up, and Henri is lost once more to his new uncertainty. It’s not a feeling he finds he enjoys.

———

The cave echoes with the noise of steel meeting steel. 

Louis is not participating. He couldn’t even if he wanted to; he’s never been good at swordplay, and isn’t armed besides the small dagger he carries to begin with. Besides, he can tell Henri isn’t out to hurt anybody. It’s the lashing-out of children. Men like him turn to their swords and their fists when cornered. It’s just a pity that the sword he turns to is no match for him, just yet.

Henri is a big man; broad and tall, and dense, judging by the way he hits the ground. It’s curious to see. Louis tilts his head to peer past the shoulder of the man who has stepped in front of him, the hot little body of his familiar in his hand as he traces the tip of his thumb down Choupette’s furry back. Very curious. He seems able to wield it with one hand without any effort, at least with no more effort than a huge steel sword necessitates. As he said, Henri is a big man. The sword is no match for him there. But then, when the second hand meets the pommel — 

A few men are clustered around the prone form of Henri now, felled like a big blond giant. Choupette climbs Louis’ cloak until she can rest against his collarbone. In some ways, he thinks Henri deserves a little humbling at the hand of the sword, though it does prove problematic for the rest of their plan if he can’t even put two hands to the pommel.

He’d felt the pulse of power that had rung out through the room when the fingertips of Henri’s left hand had found it. Louis knows no-one else had felt it but himself, and maybe Choupette. All the hairs are standing up on his arms, on the back of his neck, the sweep of the power making him feel prickly and charged with some strange energy. It’s a little intimate. For just a second, the world had narrowed to contain only him and Henri, the blue-edged steel of the sword. Now that it’s widened again, Louis’ breath feels short, his skin over-sensitised. 

Very curious. He’s beginning to see the vision that Bedivere had had for the man. 

Speaking of Bevidere; Louis catches his eye through the crowd of heads, all craning their necks to see their king. His head tilts, and Louis nods. 

Henri doesn’t stir when they lift him from the floor of the cave, eyelids shivering like he’s dreaming a thousand images a second in his stupor. Louis wonders where he’s gone, though he’s sure he’ll know well enough soon. There are dark rings around his eyes, a bruise darkening one high cheekbone. Isn’t it strange how a person such as him can look so worn-down once unconscious? 

Louis builds up a fire in the room they carry Henri into, builds it up until the wood is spitting and the flames are leaping from the grate, hot on his face. Then a pinch from his herb bag to make it fierce, to send sparks to the ceiling, and Louis settles back to dream with their king.

Dreaming comes easily, until it doesn’t. This one is easy. Louis is still aware of his body sat on the cold stone of the cave’s floor, still awake of the damp, green smell of the room and the heat of the fire against him. Choupette on his shoulder, Henri at his back. Like tendrils, his mind expands, vine-like across the room until it finds an unfamiliar consciousness, and latches on. He’s always been good at this part. Dream-magic, thought-magic. Choupette’s consciousness is a dull burn next to the bright flame of Henri’s feverish dreaming. His mind is flayed open by the touch of the sword, almost offered-up in how easy it is for Louis to slip inside. 

The easy part is detaching from the body sat by the fire. The hard part is keeping a tether between that body and the wandering mind. 

_Show me_ , Louis thinks. _Look at me_. But he barely needs to ask. Henri’s dreaming unfurls beneath his feet like a show, all the hazy dream faces like actors on a lit-up stage. Louis had seen one once; it had come through his town on a wagon led by a hungry-looking donkey. Equally hungry actors parading around in front of oil-lights, faces painted ghoulish and made even more so by the shadows. But the figures in Henri’s dreams don’t look half as hungry; richly coloured clothing, full healthy faces. The faces of the rich. Royal faces. 

And a little boy, palms bleeding from the sword, shunted out to the black sea as Louis watches his father turn to stone.

When he blinks his eyes open, Louis is cold, despite the roaring fire. The smell of sea-salt and ash in his nose. Bevidere is watching him past the flames, face distorted by the rising heat. 

“Is he — ?” he asks, though there’s no doubt on his face. He knows. A shrewd man, but a man who always needs to make sure. Louis inclines his head, and watches as Bevidere’s eyes fall on Henri, still dreaming his fitful childhood dreams. 

———

Henri comes awake silently, and all at once. One minute he is chin-deep in dreaming, and the next he is staring unblinkingly up at a stained canopy, a hard mattress under his back and the smell of damp in his nose. 

His hands are tingling by his sides, heavy like they’re full of sand as he raises them in front of his eyes, slowly, tremblingly. Big and broad and callused and still very much his own, though Henri can’t understand how he is seeing the old purple scars bisecting his palms for the very first time in his life. He feels like he’s still got one foot in the dream, though becomes aware of himself in increments. The canopy — the bed — the darkness — 

The last thing he remembers is the jolt of putting palm to pommel. Heart beating so hard and so fast he’s sure it could’ve popped in his chest. 

Through the darkness, something shifts. The pop and crackle of burning wood, the rich smell of it; damp pine burning smoky. With some difficulty, Henri lifts his head, and the first thing his eyes find is the Sword; glowing blue-white and wicked in the dim cave. Henri’s palms itch at the sight of it. His hairline prickles with sweat that the cave isn’t warm enough to have kicked up itself. 

The mage’s pale eyes peer at him beyond it. When their eyes meet, Henri is reminded of his dream once more; the bright pain running across his palms, the silent, foreign presence that has never been there before. _Was it you?_ he wants to ask, though somehow doesn’t need to. The mage holds Henri’s eye for a second, the firelight flickering on his face, before he drops it. And Henri turns away too, quietly troubled and trying hard not to show it. 

If he could remember what had happened, maybe Henri wouldn’t feel so vulnerable. The last few days seem a lesson in how well he can hold up in the face of the unknown, or how he crumbles against it. But Henri hasn’t bowed to anything in his life, and doesn’t intend to start just because some slip of a man has managed to get into his head. No, he needs to do what he had done back home whenever he came up against some hard situation; he needs to twist it to benefit his own ends. But what are his ends? His head feels like its been rung off the ground, which maybe it actually has been. He must’ve gone down like a sack of shit after the Sword had —

Well, never mind. He screws his eyes shut, and digs his thumbs into his eye sockets, trying to relieve the ache building up behind his eyes. The sooner he leaves that sword with whoever wants to take it, the better. Then he can get home and try and rebuild from whatever rubble is waiting for him back in London. 

Again, that un-felt grief nudges at him. Henri covers his eyes with his hands, and breathes out slowly.

From across the room, the mage says, “You should sleep more. You’re exhausted.” His voice echoes in the high-ceilinged room, bouncing off the slick, mossy walls. When Henri opens his eyes, the mage is watching him once more, a bat-like figure between the thin fingers of sunlight drifting through the high-set window, the dancing flames in the grate at his side. Eyeglasses catching the light of the fire just so that his eyes are hidden behind the reflection. But then he moves his head, and Henri meets those grey-blue eyes, and he’s back in his dream with the dark water slapping against the sides of the boat he had been too young to remember. 

“I thought my mother was a whore,” Henri croaks, the words coming out of him without his leave. His muscles tremble as he props himself up into a sitting position, like he’d spent three days and three nights sparring with George, instead of getting beaten to hell and back by that Sword. “Do you know how I got these scars, mage?”

“I have a name.” The mage’s voice is deadpan, dry. “It’s Dega.”

“I felt you in my head,” Henri continues as though Dega hadn’t spoken. There’s a knot of some emotion he can’t put name to in his chest, and it flares when he speaks again, “You saw everything I saw. So tell me.”

A long beat of silence follows his words. Just the slow and distant rush of water, the crackling of the flames, to fill it. Then Dega’s eyes dip, and gathers himself up off the ground to cross the room. He looks smaller than he had before; like his body is gathered in tight to himself. “I think it’s important you say it yourself,” he murmurs, taking a seat cross-legged on the floor by Henri’s bed. The bat still clings to his collar, looking at Henri with bright black eyes like inquisitive little beads. 

“My father —” Henri breathes, eyes on the bat. “That’s why I could pull the sword.”

“You knew it all along,” Dega says. “Subconsciously. You buried it down, I just brought it back to the surface.”

“I wish you hadn’t,” Henri mutters, feeling another pulse of that delayed grief. Then he says it again, because it’s all beginning to avalanche on him, and he hates how weak it makes him feel, hates that Dega is bearing witness to his vulnerability. Inside and out. 

What’s a man supposed to do when he learns that his past, even his own self, is some fabricated shade built to hide the truth? Henri feels struck down to the very core by it, grappling with all the fragmented and rapidly fading parts of himself that he’d always prided as parts of himself. Son of a whore overcoming all odds to provide for his mother, to become the man his father hadn’t stuck around to be. It was all a lie. The silver spoon he was born with may be tarnished now but it’ll always be silver. Jesus, his mother. His pain and confusion is morphing to anger quicker than he can even process it. 

“If you accept the sword —” Dega begins, and Henri bites his head off before the man can finish his sentence.

“Shut up,” he hisses, breathing heavy. His fists are clenched in his lap; Henri has to fight the urge to cover his face from the mage’s heavy gaze. “I’m not going along with what you want for me. Ever since I pulled that sword everything’s gone to shit — how am I supposed to trust a word you say?” 

Silence. Dega waits for Henri to glance his way before he speaks, sounding measured and thoughtful like he’s had decades to meditate on this very conversation. And Henri hates it, hates not knowing when he’s gonna stop feeling like he’s out of his depth. 

“You don’t have to trust me, or anybody,” he says. “You don’t have to do any of this. But the kingdom will fall and that’s a fact. If you’re comfortable with that, you can leave today.”

They eye each other through the gloom. Some part of Henri that is still shrewd, and not quite as flooded with emotion as the rest of him is, thinks that Dega is not quite telling the truth. There’s no way he could up and walk away after all that. After they lost men saving his neck from the block. Then Dega’s eyes flick, and Henri knows he’s lying, and is surprised by the spark of genuine interest that lights up inside him as he realises it. It soothes him, oddly. Speaking with a fellow deceiver is putting him back on steadier ground. 

“Okay,” Henri says, slowly. “I’ll leave, then.”

Dega shrugs. “You’ll have more rubble to worry about than the ruins of your whorehouse.”

Henri inclines his head. “I think I can take that chance.”

Neither of them move. On Dega’s shoulder, the bat nudges its face into the hood of his cloak. The Sword looms over his shoulder like some unwelcome third party to their sparring. It’s Dega who cracks the stalemate between them first.

He sighs. “Without you, and without the sword, we’ll all be bent to tyranny.” His eyes flick up, pupils huge in the darkness and fixing Henri in place. “You included.”

Henri stares at the mage. He thinks he’d give his right arm to spin the world back on itself, to go back to that night in the street, to avoid getting scooped up and dragged to that godforsaken beach. Maybe it would only be delaying the inevitable, but a part of Henri he isn’t proud of just doesn’t feel ready for all this. All his vague plans and petty criminalities back in London feel like a distant dream. He wishes for the time when his biggest worry was running out of space in his bloody coffers with all the money he and the boys were raking in. And now, all of that money gone, his home gone, his mother, the girls — and the kingdom apparently resting in his scarred palms, ripe for the saving.

It feels ironic, the way he’d play at some gutter king back at home, almost as if the body and the blood knows its own greatness even if the head doesn’t.

“I don’t want to be responsible for any more deaths,” Henri murmurs, and for the first time notices a warmth in the mage’s grey eyes. Firelight on his face, hair so black it takes the light. Henri wonders if he were to touch it, whether it’d be warm.

“There’ll be far more deaths if you don’t accept the sword. More than you could ever imagine.”

“Can I think on it?” Henri asks, and knows the answer before the mage even opens his mouth. 

He glances back to his palms, flexing them to feel the old scar pull as Dega murmurs, “There’s no time to think.”

—————

There’s a delicacy involved in making Henri do what one wants him to. Louis thinks he has it cracked, which is why Bevidere has him dealing with the man. It’s about making whatever it is sound like Henri himself had come to the conclusion first. Louis has a quiet skill in making people do what he wants them to, without letting them know it was his idea in the first place.

“You said yourself,” he murmurs, to Henri’s sulky profile. “It’ll be a formidable advantage to us all if you mastered the sword.”

Henri’s gives him a sidelong look. “I said that, did I?” he asks, and Louis slinks back to reconsider his approach.

No matter whose idea it is — or who thinks it was their idea — they have him on board. It had taken the persuasive blend of Goosefat’s sly comments, Bevidere’s quiet command, and Louis’ own skill in cajoling what he wants out of people to get him there, but a small victory is still a victory. Sometimes it’s all one can get in wartime.

The two of them go by boat, and by foot, no noise but for the rain falling on the trees and the sounds of their exertion as they wind they way through into the depths of the forest. Henri is pale against the dark lushness of the deep forest, darting eyes hard in his face like chips of flint. He’s afraid; Louis can feel it rising from him in waves. But he covers it well. So well that Bevidere was pleased with himself, mistaking the set of Henri’s jaw for determination, not fear. 

_The Darklands_. In Louis’ tongue they have a different name for it; the mile-long spit of heavily wooded land surrounded by cold, rushing water. Or rather, that’s its physical base. Above it, below it, all around it, exists the Darklands. Like a distorted mirror-image realm full the brim with things which make even Louis quietly nervous. A sizable part of him knows that Henri will be able to hold his own, sword or not. He wouldn’t have convinced Bevidere of its necessity if he didn’t.

But there’s a smaller part which worries. And that’s the part that has him watching Henri, who is unnaturally silent throughout their journey, mouth tight and eyes wary. 

“This is it?” he asks, when they stop. His first words in hours, though Louis has seen him watching everything, taking it all in. A trace of bravado creeps into his voice, “What, does it get worse at night?”

“This is the entrance,” Louis replies, fishing his dagger from his belt to slit at the pouch in his arms. Their eyes meet across the circle, Henri’s brows furrowed above that calculating, heavy gaze. Like looking directly into the heart of a fire. Louis returns it, even if it makes him feel flushed and over-aware of himself. The contents of the pouch fall to the forest floor, and then erupt, the ground clawing and churning back from itself in every place the herbs from the pouch touch. Louis watches Henri’s expression change at the sight of it as the rain begins to fall harder. “Do you remember what I told you to do?” Louis asks, over the noise of the ground splitting itself into the gateway, over the rush of the rain, and Henri’s attention swings back to him.

They face each other outside of the ring of erupted ground. Louis watches Henri’s fists clench and unclench at his sides, his dark blonde hair slick to his face as the rain continues to beat down. He’s hazy through it, the forest dim and watchful on all sides, the mossy stones like a silent audience to — well, what is this? Louis’ fingers are tingling. Henri’s eyes are on his mouth. 

“I’m not that stupid,” he says, raising his voice over the drum of rain on the trees. Then he flashes a broad, showy smile, and Louis thinks, _nobody could ever mistake you for stupid._ “Are you gonna miss me, mage?” 

The sword gleams wickedly on his hip. Louis doesn’t reply, and then with a crunch of his boot to the ground inside of the ring, Henri is gone. Just Louis, and the rain, Choupette clung to his clothes inside of the cover of his cloak. Carefully, he removes her, the rain lessening to a mist as the ground begins to shrink back and heal itself. Soon there won’t even be a scar to see. 

“Can you find him?” he murmurs to her. “Can you keep watch?”

The trick with dream magic is that if it’s been done once it’s easy to do again. The mind becomes familiar, like a comfortable pair of shoes, easy to slip on and off at whim. Over a long enough period of time, it can even become involuntary. One goes to sleep and wakes up in a dream that isn’t their own. Louis doesn’t know that part from experience; he’s never wanted to. Now, he finds himself mulling over how intimate that would be. To know a person to an extent that your minds seek each other without trying — it distracts him, has him sleeping badly, heavy-eyed and drowsy through meetings as they ready themselves for what will come once Henri is back.

“If he survives,” Goosefat has taken to saying, with an edge of glee. It almost always earns him a slap on the back of the head, which he takes with a grin, the penance apparently worth it. 

Louis holds out two days more before he dreams with Henri again.

Maybe it’s so he has something to bite back at Goosefat’s increasingly enthusiastic taunts with. Maybe it’s because it’s been one week and Louis has expected Choupette to let him know Henri’s progress. He tries to scry through her just once, but seeing the world through the bat’s eyes has always driven Louis to nausea and this time is no different. He catches sight of dark boulders, rushing water, the faraway yips and howls of wolves. It’s enough to send him to his room, to stoke up a fire to keep his body warm while he’s absent. 

Latching onto Henri’s mind is difficult, which Louis takes for the interference of the Darklands and nothing more sinister. Because one moment he is a latch seeking a hook, and the next he is sliding home, and the mummers’ play of Henri’s dream is unfurling around him. The creature on horseback, the glass-like edge of the sword slicing cleanly through the child’s palms. Louis feels the pain as though it’s his own. He wonders if Henri dreams of anything else. 

Then, before his eyes, the strange hazy faces of Henri’s dream begin to melt, and fade. The child in the boat clutches his bleeding hands into fists, and when he raises his head to meet Louis’ eye, his face is older, bearded, the Henri that Louis knows. Sun-beaten and handsome, that quick-to-smile mouth.

Louis takes a step back, the eye contact like a hot stake through his chest. His boot crunches against gravel, and a glance away from Henri’s face shows their setting has morphed and changed just as he has. Now they stand in the forest, in the ring of stones, on the ground without its scarred doorway. 

They face each other, breath fogging the cold air. If Louis concentrates, he can still smell the cave, can hear the drip of water and feel the fire warming his face. But Henri is grinning, and Louis is getting tugged further and further into the dream with every second that ticks by.

“So you missed me, mage?” Henri asks, hands behind his back and an expression of exquisite arrogance on his face as he takes a step forward. It’s the exact moment that Louis panics, and retreats, yanking himself back into his body by the thread that remains. 

The fire has burned low. How long had he been dreaming? When Louis raises his hand to his glasses, he finds them fogged, as though he’s come in quickly from the cold outdoors. 

—————

Henri doesn’t remember how he gets out, but when he comes to he’s swaddled like a child in furs, every inch of him lighting up with pain as he shifts, and groans. Cool hands on his face, a familiar smell of ozone and burned herbs. 

“He’s awake.”

“Where am I?” he mumbles, slitting his eyes open only to screw them closed as light lances at him. That cool hand pats his wrist.

“You’re going home,” the voice says, and Henri thinks of dark nights lit by the fat yellow moon overhead, thinks of a bat flitting over his head as he creeps through dense trees. 

“Dega,” he groans, and forces himself to sit up by complete will. Every muscle in his body aches at him to stop. “How did you —” 

The mage’s face is closer than he’d anticipated. Kneeled down at the side of Henri’s low bed, one wide-knuckled hand resting delicately over Henri’s, mouth parted and eyes wide behind his eyeglasses. He looks as shocked as Henri feels at finding him so close, and together they share an oozing moment of silence as the world begins to come back to Henri. The creak of a ship, the slap of the water to the sides of it. He’s below deck, right down in the belly of it, steadily realising this is the first time he’s shared real air with the mage since he started appearing in Henri’s dreams. 

“The bat,” Dega murmurs, and Henri watches his mouth move. “Choupette, she —” 

Then the door to the room slams open and Dega springs away from the bed, straightening up to take a position at the door as Bevidere approaches, eyes flicking critically over Henri’s face.

“You look awful,” he says, and Henri manages to shoot him a smile despite his aching face.

“I feel it.” And then, a glance at Dega. “Can I get some fresh air?” 

They bundle him back into the furs on the deck, and Henri melts into his seat as the boat cuts its way cleanly through the water. _Home_ , Dega had said. Henri supposes it must be his home now. The fresh air is good on his face, the gentle rocking of the deck lulling Henri into something exhausted and brainless. He could sleep, if it wasn’t for the pain. Every wound and bruise and lump and bump the Darklands had dealt him seem to be lighting up now that he’s out of there. 

Bevidere is speaking. To him, Henri’s not sure; maybe it’s just to the world at large. Even if it is to him, Henri doesn’t have the strength to listen just yet. The Darklands keep replaying themselves behind his eyes every time he shuts them; disjoined half-formed memories less like real life and more like some strange imaginings. 

“I saw your bat,” he murmurs, to Dega. The mage is perched on a stool by Henri’s side, dabbing something stinging and astringent to a wound on his forearm. He doesn’t look up. Conjuring a smile onto his sore face, Henri adds, “Was you keeping an eye on me part of the plan?”

That gets him looking. The mage’s eyes dart. A pale grey not quite at home against his olive skin, but all the more bewitching for it. “You did good in there,” is all he says, which of course confirms all of Henri’s vague suspicions. 

It unfurls something warm and wicked in Henri’s chest, something that has him smirking despite the pain from his split lip. “Well, it’ll make a good story one day, huh?”

To Henri’s surprise, the mage smiles back, an impish thing that transforms his face into something bright and mischievous. Like a little bird, a black-eyed bat. “Yes, it will,” he says, and then bends his head back over Henri’s arm. “There’s more story to come.”

But Henri can’t think of that just yet. Instead he settles back into his seat, into the thick furs and Dega’s careful hands, and watches the horizon. His body aches at him, urging at him to sleep, but Henri can’t let himself. Dreaming without Dega in his head will be strange. 

“How did it feel?” the mage asks, and Henri throws him a sidelong glance that Dega catches easily. “When you put the sword to the altar?” His eyes are alive and curious, and Henri is helpless to resist the obvious lure the mage is throwing out. After all, hasn’t he always loved the attention that comes with storytelling? 

So he tells him, and Dega listens, and somewhere between the Darklands and Camelot, Dega becomes Louis, and Henri himself becomes the heir apparent he was born to be. They don’t dream together any more, but sometimes when they’re apart Henri feels the presence of the mage just as he had in the Darklands, and it comforts him. 

On a windy clifftop a stone’s throw from the castle, a stone’s throw from his destiny, Henri watches a snake emerge from the collar of Louis’ cloak, and gulps down his fear at the sight of it.

“The venom will show you what you need to see,” Louis says, “And things that you won’t want to.”

 _They’re the same_ , Henri thinks, as the snake’s body coils around his throat, and his hand grows clammy in Louis’ grip. The mage’s eyes are hypnotising, grey flint in his face, lips moving silently on a chant that only stutters when the snake’s teeth sink home into the column of Henri’s throat. _Do you feel it?_ he wants to ask, but finds his face rictus as the venom lights up his bloodstream. _Do you feel it?_ Henri’s hand tightens around Louis’, locking his eyes with those chips of stone as he struggles to keep from the memories the venom is drawing out of him. The boy, the boat, the sword, the stone.

“I feel it,” Louis says, out loud, and the snake releases its bite.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
